SARAH WINNEMUCCA'S 



PRACTICAL SOLUTION OF THE INDIAN 
PROBLEM. 



A LETTER TO DR. LYMAN ABBOT 

OF THE "CHRISTIAN UNION." 



ELIZABETH P. PEABODY. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
2Srabersttg Press. 
1886. 



GIFT 

ANNA L DAWES 
SEPT- 17 %&§§ 



£77 

SAEAH WINNEMUCCA'S 

PRACTICAL SOLUTION OF THE INDIAN PROBLEM. 



To Dr. Lyman Abbot, Editor of the Christian Union: — 

Because you so cordially announced Sarah Win- 
nemucca's "New Departure," a year or more ago, 
as the Christian Union's solution of the Indian prob- 
lem, I send you this Report that I am now desirous 
to make to the public, unofficial and official, of her 
progress. The distinguishing characteristic of this 
New Departure is that, instead of being, as usual, a 
passive reception of civilizing influences proffered by 
white men who look down upon the Indian as a 
spiritual, moral, and intellectual inferior, it is a spon- 
taneous movement, made by the Indian himself, from 
himself, in full consciousness of free agency, for the 
education that is to civilize him. 

Sarah Winnemucca's idea is an inheritance from 
that remarkable chief of the Piutes, Captain Truckee, 
who in 1848, for the first time, discovered that there 
were white men in the world ! In the first chapter 
of her " Life among the Piutes" 1 Sarah tells of his 
meeting with General (then Captain) Fremont in the 
mountains of Nevada, who accepted his proffered 



1 For sale by T. Y. Crowell, 13 Lafayette Place, New York. 



4 

guidance on the unaccustomed way, and with whom 
he and a dozen of his braves went down to Cali- 
fornia, where the wonders of civilization burst upon 
him, firing his imagination, before his self-respect had 
been wounded and his heart discouraged, as is the 
usual Indian experience, with an unquenchable ardor 
to share these glories. 

He and his braves were able to do Fremont service 
in the affair of Mariposa and the immediately fol- 
lowing conquest of California, for which they were 
decorated, and so respectfully and kindly treated by 
Fremont that the old chiefs heart was completely 
won; and he clung to his " white brothers,'* as he 
pathetically called them, to the end of his life, al- 
though immediately on his return to Nevada he was 
told of those terrible emigrations that had rushed 
across it "like a roaring lion," as Sarah phrases it, 
striking terror into the souls of the women and even 
of the brave men, who could not understand the 
wanton and unprovoked cruelty with which these 
white savages shot all Indians down as soon as thev 
were seen, as if thej r were wild beasts. But he per- 
sisted in calling thern exceptions to the end of his life. 

The artless autobiography of the first chapters of 
Sarah's book gives the key to her career as reconcil- 
ing mediator for the mutual understanding of the 
two races. She was educated for it by her grand- 
father. That she has actually become this, is shown by 
an article from the "Daily Alta California," of July 
24, which I have just received; and I beg that you 
will insert every word of it here : — 



5 



u We have referred already to the school for Indian chil- 
dren established in Xevada by the Piute woman. Princess 
Sarah Winnemucca. Her efforts have seemed to us to 
deserve encouragement. Travellers through Xevada who 
have seen the squalid crowds of Indian children at the 
stations taking eagerly scraps of food offered them at the 
car windows, may think that the regeneration of those people 
is impossible. To change this opinion it is only necessary 
to consider the case of Sarah Winnemucca, who. when her 
childhood was long past, first had opportunities for education, 
and improved them so well that her attainments command 
the respect of all white people who know her. What educa- 
tion has done for her it may do for a majority of the children 
of that tribe in which she was born a Princess, a Chief's 
daughter. She is very active for her people, and loses no 
opportunity to urge them forward in the path to civilization. 
Recentlv she sent a message to those Indians living in Invo 
County, in this State, urging them to send their children to 
school. A copy of this letter was sent to the School Trus- 
tees of Inyo, and we invite the attention of our readers to it. 
She says : — 

" • Brothers axd Sisters : Hearing that you are about to 
start a school to educate your children, I want to say a word 
about it. You all know me ; many of you are my aunts or 
cousins. We are of one race, — your blood is my blood. — so 
I speak to you for your good. I can speak five tongues, — 
three Indian tongues, English, and Spanish. I can read and 
write, and am a school teacher. Now, I do not say this to 
boast, but simply to show you what can be done. When I 
was a little girl there were no Indian schools ; I learned under 
great difficulty. Your children can learn much more than I 
know, and much easier ; and it is your duty to see that they 
go to school. There is no excuse for ignorance. Schools are 



6 



being built here and there, and you can have as many as you 
need; all they ask you to do is to send your children. You 
are not asked to give money or horses, — only to send your 
children to school. The teacher will do the rest. He or she 
will fit your little ones for the battle of life, so that they can 
attend to their own affairs instead of having to call in a white 
man. A few years ago you owned this great country ; to-day 
the white man owns it all, and you own nothing. Do you 
know what did it ? Education. You see the miles and miles 
of railroad, the locomotive, the Mint in Carson, where they 
make money. Education has done it all. Xow, what it has 
done for one man it will do for another. You have brains 
same as the whites, your children have brains, and it will be 
your fault if they grow up as you have. 1 entreat you to 
take hold of this school, and give your support by sending 
your children, old and young, to it ; and when they grow up 
to manhood and womanhood they will bless you.' 

" It is hard to find in all the literature of pedagogics a 
stronger appeal to a primitive or any other people to avail 
themselves of the benefits of education. Exceptionally good 
in its language and logical in its presentation of reasons, it 
constitutes not only advice to her own tribe, but it is the 
finest of all the genuine proofs of the capacity of the Indian 
intellect. We cannot help feeling that such a woman de- 
serves help, and that her work should command support far 
beyond the lines of her own State. If each of the tribes 
could furnish only one such woman, of equal culture, sincerity, 
and energy, their joint influence upon the future of our Indians 
would be greater than all the armies that can be put in the 
field. The Federal Government should consider her and her 
work. She has defended her people against the rascally 
treatment of its agents, but with a rare discretion has never, 
therefore, inflamed them against the whites. She has con- 



T 



stantly pointed to civilization as desirable above all things, 
and has taught them that return to their old ways is for- 
ever impossible. 

" We believe that the Indian Department should found an 
Indian school in Nevada and put Sarah at the head of it. 
The cost would be small compared with the value of the ex- 
periment, and surely it would command the sympathy of all 
right-minded people. She has ample culture, and she knows 
the Indian character thoroughly, while it is easy to believe 
that her example will be of great value in encouraging her 
pupils. When Indians have a white teacher there must 
naturally seem a great gulf between them. The pupils must 
often despair of ever approximating the learning which they 
believe came as naturally to the white man as the color of his 
skin. But when an Indian teacher like Sarah can say to 
them, 4 1 learned this, I am an Indian, and you are as good 
as I am ; what I learned is as possible and as easy to you/ 
there must be in it a superior encouragement. We do not 
know whether there is on this coast any organization that is 
charged with the interests of these humble people. We 
believe Mrs. John Bidwell has done something in her vicinity 
toward advancing them, and she may be known to the East 
for her g^ood work. If there be an organization it should 
bring this matter to the attention of the Government, to the 
end that this Indian woman may have facilities equal to her 
energy and to her noble spirit. It won't hurt the whites any 
to give their gentle and philanthropic sentiments free play in a 
matter that is full of interest and of genuine Christianity." 

Without stopping to tell of the circumstances of 
her life, inward and. outward, that have brought 
her to the point of her present undertaking, — 
though to do so would give new meaning and 



8 



interest to it, — I hasten to say that a year and a 
half ago, when it seemed as if the conditions she 
craved were to be despaired of, Senator Leland Stan- 
ford, who came into relation with the Piutes in 1863 
and personally knew their exceptional character, spon- 
taneously deeded to Sarah's brother, Chief Natches, 
one hundred and sixty acres of land near Lovelocks ; 
and a few of the friends of Sarah at the East, to 
whom she had fully communicated her idea and what 
she wished to do, advanced from their own private 
resources barely sufficient capital to enable Natches 
to get his land surveyed and in part fenced and 
planted, and Sarah to open her school for his chil- 
dren, and those of some other Piutes wandering in 
the neighborhood seeking chance jobs of work. She 
began instructing them in the English language, which 
she had grown up speaking in her equal intercourse 
with both races. 

Our idea in giving this aid, without which the land 
would have been no boon, was to give Sarah the 
chance to begin her experiment independent of the 
agency at Pyramid Lake, which, like the large ma- 
jority of Indian agencies, prevents civilization by 
insulting and repressing that creative self-respect and 
conscious freedom to act, from which alone any vital 
human improvement can spring. We wanted that 
there should be no pretext of favors received, for the 
agent, who naturally enough is her personal enemy, 
to interfere or meddle while she, with a few of her 
people, began a self-supporting, self-directed life on the 
ground of their inherited domestic moralities, which, 



9 



in. the case of the Piutes at least, are very pure, as 
she had demonstrated to us in her lectures and by 
her own remarkable personality, thus making a 
healthy wild stock of natural religion on which to 
graft a Christian civilization worthy of the name, 
which might rebuke and correct that which certainly 
disgraces it now on our frontiers. But all that we 
did for her still left her with broken health and 
numberless hardships to contend with, which would 
have crushed any less heroic spirit. 

She began her school in a brush arbor, teaching 
gospel hymns and songs of labor, that she interpreted 
in Piute ; and as soon as the children could speak and 
understand some English she began to teach them to 
read and write it, also to draw and even to cipher, 
sending us through the post-office specimens of their 
work and of their sewing. And in February we 
were surprised with the following letter, which came 
soon after one from herself, in which she described 
the unexpected visit, and said that Captain Cook 
made a speech to the children (which she interpreted 
to them in Piute), telling them that when he was a 
boy he had not such advantages of education as they 
were enjoying. This letter I immediately sent to the 
editor of the " Boston Transcript," who published it 
with his own indorsement as follows : — 

A PRINCESS'S SCHOOL. 

Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody has had her heart cheered — 
not that it has ever faltered in that generous trust of which 
only noble natures are capable — with the following unex- 



10 



pected testimony to the faithfulness of the Piute Ci Princess" 
Winnemucca to the cause of uplifting her people. Other 
friends of the Indian have turned against her, but Miss 
Peabody has persevered in supporting this most remarkable 
woman through every kind of cruel and scandalous assault 
upon her character by those interested in having the poor, 
dispossessed remnants of the peaceful Piutes left naked to 
their enemies. This is surely trustworthy testimony : — 

Lovelocks, Feb. 25, 1886. 

Miss Peabody, — A few of the principal residents of 
Lovelocks, having heard so frequently of the Piute school 
and the aspirations of the Princess, concluded, after very little 
cogitation, to verify in person the truth of these prodigious 
reports. As a few of the party were unable to attend during 
the week, the children were kindly retained on Saturday for 
our enjoyment. 

The site of the school building is about two miles from 
the town ; and so unpretentious is it in appearance that a 
stroller would look upon it as a quiet rural home instead of 
the labor field of your worthy beneficiary. TTlien we neared 
the school shouts of merry laughter rang upon our ears, and 
little dark and sunburnt faces smiled a dim approval of our 
visitation. After a brief conversation with the Princess, we 
seated ourselves comfortably, evidently feeling that 

" Come what coine may, 
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day." 

Speaking in her native tongue, the Princess requested the 
children to name all the visible objects, repeat the days of 
the week and months of the year, and calculate to thousands, 
which they did in a most exemplary manner. Then she 
asked them to give a manifestation of their knowledge upon 
the blackboard, each in turn printing his name and spelling 



11 



aloud. It is needless to say- Miss Peabody, that we were 
spellbound at the disclosure. Nothing but the most assid- 
uous labor could have accomplished this work. But most 
amazingly did I rudely stare (and most of our party were 
guilty of the same sin) when these seemingly ragged and 
untutored beings began singing gospel hymns with precise 
melody, accurate time, and distinct pronunciation. The 
blending of their voices in unison was grand, and an exceed- 
ingly sweet treat. We look upon it as a marvellous pro- 
gression ; and so gratified were we that we concluded to 
send this testimonial containing the names of those pres- 
ent, in order that you may know of the good work the Prin- 
cess is trvino' to consummate. Considering that onlv six 
weeks have been consumed in effecting this much [it is six 
weeks since the house was completed; the school out of doors 
had existed longer. — E. P. P.], we feel that any further as- 
sistance would be well deserved and profitably expended by 
Sarah. One of our party. Captain Cook by name, addressed 
the children upon the usefulness of knowledge and its power 
in the world. When the Princess had made proper interpre- 
tation of this speech, their bright eyes seemed to say in re- 
sponse, " We are. though still in the bud. the flowers of the 
coming dawn which perfume the golden mosses of the oak." 

I remain very respectfully, 

Louisa Marzen. 

Signed by each — 

Mrs. Jennie E. Harrington, 
Mrs. H. C. Emmons, 
T. H. Workman, 
Geo. W. Lecompton, 
Emily E. Cutting, 
Captain Frank Cook. 



12 



Sarah wrote also that she had asked these people to 
write and tell me of their approbation, because it was 
I that had given the schoolhouse. Bat in doing 
this, and also by subsequently naming her school the 
" Peabody Institute/' which is painted on the out- 
side, there has grown up a false impression, as if I 
were the originator and prevailing influence of the 
school. This is diametrically opposite to the fact ; 
for the very point I would make most prominent is 
that the whole thing is an Indian idea and an Indian 
plan ; and the reason that she feels me to be her 
mainstay is that I do not bother her with my sugges- 
tions, but wait to see what it is her impulse to do, 
because I see that she knows, as I cannot, how the 
Indian mind is to be approached and set at work for 
that self-development which is the only real educa- 
tion. I owe to her a conviction, which has grown 
upon me continually for three years, that the only vital 
education for the Indian as for every child is Froebehs 
method of keeping an equipoise of doing and thinking. 

Soon after receiving the above letter I had several 
newspapers sent me from Nevada, Utah, and Cali- 
fornia, from which I will extract specimen para- 
graphs. One from a Lovelocks correspondent of 
the " Silver State'* says: — 

The Princess Sarah is making her school for young 
Piutes a success. The attendance is large, and little Indians 
may be seen on our streets every morning with their lunches, 
wending their way to school, a mile and a half off. She 
keeps excellent order, and conducts the school as systemati- 
cally as any experienced ' schoolma'am.' " 



13 



There is a very certain proof that neither Sarah 
nor her brother suggested this article, in the seven 
words we put in italics in another paragraph of it ; 
for Piutes have never been known to handle " toma- 
hawk or scalping-knife," — never took a scalp, though 
they have been scalped themselves by whites, of 
which Sarah told several pathetic instances in her 
lectures when she was here. 

" Chief Natches has put aside the tomahawk and scalping- 
knife, and taken hold of the plough and grubbing-hoe. He 
has cleared about forty acres of the one hundred and sixty 
given him by Governor Stanford. He will sow thirty acres 
of wheat, and put the rest in barley and vegetables. He 
has a dozen or more Indians working with him upon a dam 
belonging to his white neighbors, who pay him by allowing 
him water for his ranch, this season,'' 

Another says : — 

4< Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins has erected a schoolhouse 
for her people, and has about twenty-five pupils, all little 
Piutes. They learn rapidly ; and though the school has 
been housed only about six weeks, some of them can read 
and write already. The school is free to all Piute children 
in this county, provided their parents make arrangements to 
board them. This is the only drawback to the school, that 
Princess Sallie has not means to feed the children, and she 
could not have built the schoolhouse had it not been for the 
assistance given her by philanthropic people in the East." 

Another quotes from the " Daily Alta California * ? 
the first notice it made, as early as March (referred 
to on page 4) : — 

" Out in Nevada is proceeding an experiment that deserves 
the respectful sympathy of the world. Princess Sarah, 



14 



daughter of TVinnemucca. late chief of the Piutes, has 
opened a school for the Indian children, and the young of her 
tribe are flocking to it for instruction. In this effort to reclaim 
her primitive people this Indian woman rises to a nobility 
that puts her in line with the best of the superior [?] race." 

When I wrote to Sarah for an explanation of the 
"drawback," she said that the Piute parents who had 
been doing job-work for the people of Lovelocks in 
the winter, must go on their summer hunt for subsist- 
ence and winter stores, and take their children with 
them, and already some of her best scholars had 
gone ; for which she was sorry, as she had hoped 
that when Senator Stanford should go home from 
Congress at midsummer, he would stop and see them, 
and be so pleased with what Natches had done with 
the land and what she had done in the school, that 
he would demand, from the fund in the Indian Office 
appropriated for Indian education, money enough to 
make her school a boarding-school during the sum- 
mers. She said the poor parents had assembled in 
council in her schoolroom, and expressed their grief 
that they could not pay her themselves for their chil- 
dren's board ; and they compared this school, where 
the children were so happy in learning, to the Reser- 
vation schools, where they r were whipped and taught 
nothing, but on which the Government wasted mil- 
lions of dollars every year. 

Now I (together with other intimate friends of 
Sarah) was desirous that the Government should 
not be solicited to help, but that her own work, seen 
in contrast with the work of the agency, should 



15 



command its sympathetic co-operation ; and I put 
into the " Boston Transcript" of April 21 the fol- 
lowing article : — ■ 

THE FIRST SCHOOL TAUGHT BY AN INDIAN. 

To the Editor of the Transcript : I was much obliged to 
you for your sympathetic introduction to the letter from those 
seven people in Lovelocks who wrote me about Sarah Win- 
nemueca's school, whose success under such hard conditions 
as she is in (starving on pine nuts, without bread or meat) 
is such a very important fact with respect to Indian educa- 
tion, which hitherto has been necessarily so imperfect, be- 
cause conducted by instructors who did not know any Indian 
language. This is the first instance on record of an Indian 
school taught by a full-blooded Indian who grew up with 
both races, speaking both languages, and inspired from her 
infancy with the idea of civilizing her people by making 
English also their vernacular, and preparing the scholars in 
their turn to teach English to their companions and their 
parents, as children can best do. 

Then, after inserting the above-given slips from the 
Western papers, I added this paragraph : — - 

If I can raise Si 00 a month this summer, the calamity of 
having this real school scattered may be averted. Within a 
week I have raised nearly a hundred for April ; and if prom- 
issory notes to be paid in May, June, July, and August, can 
be sent me at once, I can send her a telegram to keep her 
scholars, for their board will be paid. Any sums from one 
dollar to a hundred may be sent to me at Jamaica Plain, 4 
Cheshire Street, in these promissory notes, for which I shall 
not demand payment unless the school goes on. 

Elizabeth P. Peabody. 



16 



This appeal immediately brought $400 in sums 
from one dollar to fifty dollars, and a promise of 
another $100 for August ; and I sent word to her to 
keep her scholars. This was a great proof of the 
moral impression she had made of herself in the sum- 
mer of 1883, for already all the organized sympathy 
for the Indians in the East was pre-engaged ; — as, 
before the Piutes were heard of, all the funds to be 
raised by the women's associations were pledged to 
their own missionary work; while General Armstrong 
came every year and carried off thousands of dollars 
for Hampton School and Carlisle, and Bishop Hare 
did the same for Dakota. 

But I see that I am transcending the limits you 
prescribed for my article, and must hasten to tell of 
a month's visit made to Sarah, beginning July 18, by 
a lady who has been for twenty years engaged prac- 
tically in public and private education West and 
East, and who became acquainted with Sarah in the 
summer of 1883, and then promised her, if she recov- 
ered Malheur, that she would go out and renew 
with her the school that Sarah and Mrs. Charles 
Parish had kept, under the auspices of the only good 
agent among seventeen that ever were sent out to 
the Piutes ; and it may be seen, by reading the 
sixth chapter of " Life among the Piutes," that noth- 
ing is wanted to solve the Indian problem practically 
(at least among the Piutes) but good faith on the 
part of the Government agents in giving them the 
white man's chances without discounting their earn- 
ings in the agents 7 interest. For the last year this 



17 



lady has been the teacher of methods in a normal 
school in Wisconsin ; and she offered to go out at her 
own expense, if provided with free passes, and report 
to me concerning the school. In quite a voluminous 
correspondence with me she has given a history of 
the statu quo, comprehending an account of the state 
of things both inside and outside of the ranch, having 
found that the half had not been told her of the dif- 
ficulties attending such an attempt as Sarah's, aris- 
ing from the general hostility of the frontiersmen to 
Indians, and their disposition to crush their attempts 
at self-subsistence, intensified by every degree of 
Indian success. She found Sarah personally also in 
circumstances of infinitely greater discomfort than 
she had imagined, and in addition to the chronic 
rheumatism and neuralgia from which she knew she 
had been suffering for two years, prostrated every 
other day with chills and fever, so that the first thing 
she set herself to doing was to cure her with quinine, 
which she effected. But this makes more striking 
her testimony to the character and quality of Sarah's 
teaching, which is directed to making the children 
understand and speak English and then to read and 
write it. She found the pupils in the Second Reader, 
and she said every lesson was read in English and 
in Piute ; and in Sarah's reading to them (from the 
Bible for instance), there was the same use made of 
both languages, and the conversation upon the sub- 
ject matter that accompanied it was extremely ani- 
mated. Comparing the classes with those with which 
she was familiar in the United States schools of chil- 



18 



dren of the same age, Sarah's scholars were decidedly 
superior. In their writing and drawing, of which she 
sent me a dozen or more specimens, the superiority 
was marked, and made more marvellous by the fact 
that there was no school furniture but benches with- 
out backs, which, when they wrote, drew, or ciphered, 
they used as tables, sitting or kneeling on the floor, 
and sometimes, making the floor their table, they lay 
on it to write or cipher. But the children were so 
interested and zealous to learn that the} 7 were per- 
fectly obedient, and when out of the specific school 
hours, — which were, at the time she arrived there, di- 
minished from the four hours that had been the rule, 
by the pressure of the industrial work connected with 
the agriculture and housekeeping (for this school of 
Sarah's comprehends all their life), — she found the 
boys digging a cellar, and the girls assisting Sarah 
about the cooking and the cleaning, everything being 
scrupulously neat both in schoolroom and tent. The 
ages of the children ranged between six and sixteen, 
and the individuality of each child was described, 
with those points in which they severally excelled. 
Within its range, in short, the education was su- 
perior, instead of inferior, to the average white educa- 
tion in our primary schools, being upon the method 
of the " New Education," in which doing leads think- 
ing, and gives definite meaning to every word used. 

I wish I could induce your readers to look into 
the volume published by Caiieton & Co., of Xew 
York, named " The Hidden Power," written by Mr. 
Tibbies, the white husband of the Ponca Bright 



19 



Eyes, every word of which, as he told me, is fact, 
except the proper names. 

It is utterly impossible to begin to do justice to any 
such movement as Sarah Winnemucca's unless the 
century-long action of the Indian Ring is understood. 
This subtle power, which dates with the organization 
of the Fur-traders' companies, has come to govern 
this country as completely as for a time did the 
Slaveocracy, and still defeats everything proposed 
to be done ; and this explains why in these last 
few years so little has been accomplished by Indian 
Rights' associations, and the enlightened plan of Mr. 
Dawes and others for division of lands in severalty to 
Indians. 



20 



POSTSCRIPT. 

Here ends the article I prepared for the " Chris- 
tian Union," but which, proving too long for a news- 
paper, you have advised me to print in a pamphlet ; 
and I conclude to make it an appeal to the UNOF- 
FICIAL people of the United States, instead of to the 
Government, as I first thought of doing. 

For, notwithstanding the good intentions of the 
new administration, I see it is effectually hindered 
(hou\ it does not itself realize) from doing justice to 
the Indian, as its first act with respect to the Crow 
Creek tribe promised would be its policy. 

I mentioned that the satisfactory testimony respect- 
ing the character of Sarah Winnemucca's school, with 
which I closed the above report of it, was extracted 
from " voluminous letters," overflowing with details 
of the innumerable difficulties Sarah had to contend 
with, of which some idea may be obtained from the 
following extract of a letter which my correspond- 
ent addressed at the same date to an Indianapolis 
newspaper : — 

" Natches wanted land of his own ; and for a wonder, he 
got it. Senator Stanford gave him one hundred and sixty 
acres. Where cattle range, land must be fenced. Lumber 
is very high, as it comes from a distance. Miss Peabody 
sent him $200 to fence it. Water comes next. Nevada is 
a desert without irrigation. By agreeing to pay them out 



21 



of his crop, Xatches furnished thirteen men (Indians and 
himself) one month, to work on the dam and ditches, to pay 
for his water, but gets no paper to show how long. Eastern 
people help him to a wagon, plough, spade, hoe, and axe. 
He already has horses, and he gets in sixty-eight acres of 
nice wheat. As the wheat grows and tempts the cattle, the 
water-power people tell him he must leave the gate open so 
they can get to their ditches, some of which they put on his 
land without permission. The white men on each side of 
him have gates, and keep them shut, although their land is 
used only for grazing. I go to town, find they have no right 
to say anything about it, and the gate is put up, and the old 
uncle who has camped by it to keep out the cows and save 
the wheat can do something else. The wheat gets ripe ; he 
can hire a machine to cut it at $1.75 per acre, cash. He has 
no cash ; he must hire Indian women at So per acre, and 
pay in wheat. 

" The next time I go to town, I am told that the water com- 
pany has decided not to let Xatches have any more water, be- 
cause 6 Indians are so lazy, they don't want them around,' 
and, for illustration, point to that old man who sat all day by 
the hole in Natches fence. I tried to explain; but it is not 
permitted to explain things here. 

" At all the railway stations along the road, one sees In- 
dians sitting on the shady side of the house or walking along 
the track, sometimes begging. I talked with one of them of 
the loafing and card-playing that is so common. She admitted 
and regretted it, and added : 6 Let me disguise you as an In- 
dian, and go to the reservation where all these Indians have 
been trained. Stay a few weeks as an Indian, and learn to 
enjoy work as we have to do it, and see if you think our 
young men can see any good in it, or have any motive for 
doing it. You know children, — see what you think the 
same training would do for a white child.' " 



22 



It is plain that jealousy and opposition were ex- 
cited to madness by the very success of Sarah's un- 
exampled enterprise, which has also aroused the 
attention of Agent Gibson, whose intrigues form the 
subjects of other letters. 

The week before she arrived, an official from Wash- 
ington, who was an intimate friend of Gibson, had 
appeared, and told Sarah that unless batches would 
surrender his independent possession of the land, and 
she the direction of her school, to the authorized 
agent of Pyramid Lake, no aid would be given to the 
boarding-school from the reserved fund for Indian 
Education. Sarah, however, had indignantly refused 
to accept any aid on such destructive conditions. 

I must confess I was not surprised or very sorry 
for this final demonstration that the only effec- 
tual thing to be done to help the Indian to come 
uj? from himself (to use a happy expression of Mr. 
Dawes', that exactly describes what Sarah is intent 
upon doing), is to abolish the present agency 
system altogether, as I am glad to see was pro- 
posed by Mr. Painter, at the late Mohunk Confer- 
ence ; for it is the most effectual instrumentality of 
a formidable Ring, composed of the still unreformed 
civil service on the frontiers, and of the majority of 
the frontier population, who deprecate Indian civiliza- 
tion, and work against it with an immense mercantile 
interest scattered all over the Union, that fattens on 
the contracts FOR supplies, which is the breath 
of life to this well-named " Hidden Power." 

It has been suggested that the preliminary step to 



23 



such abolition must be to make public the history of 
this Ring, whose action from its beginning has been 
for the general removal of the tribes from their 
several original localities ; revealing the secret of the 
Florida War, and other operations, — among its most 
subtle ones being its apparently friendly co-operation 
and hypocritical flatteries of the various organizations 
for educating and christianizing Indians. Such a his- 
tory would explain their motives in making Sarah 
Winnemucca " a suspect " in the eyes of just those 
who should have received in generous faith this 
champion of her people's right and opportunity freely 
to select the best things in civilization, — the principal 
one being, as she intuitively saw and everybody is at 
length convinced, the individual versus communal 
tenure of land, — while they are also free to retain 
whatever of the inherited tribal customs she also 
sees intuitively are necessary to preserve their social 
life heart-whole, though open to inspiration for indi- 
vidual self-development. 

In her u Life among the Piutes," which every one 
should make it a matter of conscience to read before 
making up his mind upon the character and aims 
of this most remarkable woman, it will be seen how 
naturally and inevitably she incurred the enmity of 
the several agents to whom has been traced directly 
every slander, especially that of Rinehart. 

The sixth chapter of that book gives an apprecia- 
tive account of the only agent among seventeen that 
had been sent out to the Piutes since they were 
known to the whites, who was not a calamity to 



24 



them. This man, Samuel Parish by name, by his 
disinterestedness, honesty, and the simple humanity of 
his arrangements, demonstrated that there need be 
no difficulty with the Indians if they are treated 
fairly, and that with the same chances the Piutes at 
least can become as prosperous and rich as the white 
settlers, instead of being the burden that all Indians 
have seemed to be during the " Century of Dishonor," 
so faithfully represented by " H. H." in the book of 
that name, and later in the wonderful story of " Ra- 
mona," which is gradually doing for the Indian what 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " did for the negro. But it would 
take a volume even larger than Mr. Tibbies' book 
upon the u Hidden Power" to give in detail even 
the history of this persecution of Sarah, which has 
been traced out in all its subtleties by many of her 
friends, who consist, I may truly say, of all the 
hundreds of audiences whom her artless addresses 
took captive, between her arrival at Boston in the 
spring of 1883 and her departure to the West from 
Baltimore in the August of 1884. I have never seen 
or heard of one person of all those who themselves 
heard her speak in public (after the first lecture that 
she gave in Boston), 1 who was in the slightest degree 
affected by accusations that answered themselves in 

1 In that first lecture she offended, by her story of the conduct of 
the Methodist agent Wilbur, a Methodist lady, who endeavored to 
bribe her to say no more about him, by promising her hospitality 
and other assistance. But Sarah was obliged to tell her she had 
nothing else to tell but just such actions of agents as his. This 
started an opposition against herself at once, that succeeded in mak- 
ing the Woman's Association turn a cold shoulder to her. 



25 



every person's mind who had been under the spell of 
the simple statement of facts that she made with 
names and dates, and defied the world to prove one 
of them false. I myself heard her speak in public in 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
and Pennsylvania as many as thirty times, in which 
she never repeated or contradicted herself once, 
though it was obvious that except in the choice 
of some particular subject to be made her theme, she 
took no previous thought as to what she should say, 
but trusted that the right words would be given her 
by the " Spirit Father," whose special messenger she 
believed herself to be, and impressed her audiences to 
believe that she was. 

She got thousands of signatures to her petitions, 
made friends for herself, and interested the most 
excellent members of Congress to present her peti- 
tions, and the Senate did, on July 6, 1884, pass a bill 
which by implication abolished the agency of Pyra- 
mid Lake, — for it proposed to give the reservation 
to Winnemucca's and Leggins' bands in severalty of 
lands. And so I content myself with what will give 
to any person of common sense and candid heart the 
above hints by which they may estimate the intrinsic 
worth, or rather worthlessness, of the slanderous 
rumors which Gibson has lately succeeded in im- 
pressing upon the minds of a few persons who ought 
to be her coadjutors, and whom she could aid in her 
turn in carrying out their own good intentions to the 
Indians, if it were not for the unhappy misconception 
of her which prevented their making acquaintance 



26 



with herself personally. -"There- is nothing so sad 
in the records of experience as that the children 
of light should misunderstand each other;" nor is 
anything so disastrous as a mistake made by the 
good-intentioned, because their impressions are not 
questioned but swallowed incontinently, without in- 
vestigation. Could I have had a personal interview 
with those persons, I feel sure they never would have 
given publicity to their mistake, for which I hold only 
Gibson morally responsible ; but this interview they 
did not seek, having jumped to the conclusion that 
I was passively deluded. They did not know that I 
had been a student of Indian history for more than 
seventy years, having, as early as seven years old, taken 
my first impression from my own mother's enthusiasm 
for another u Indian princess" whom a great-uncle of 
mine, one of the generals in our Revolutionary War, 
married in Northern Michigan, where he went to set- 
tle after the war, and whose half-breed descendants, 
by the name of Hunt, are valuable citizens of that 
State. It was the first impression of the noble do- 
mestic education this Indian princess gave her chil- 
dren, followed up by hearing my father read to my 
mother, before I was ten years old, the Moravian 
Heckerwelcler's " History of the North American 
Indians," which goes into the details of the tribal 
mode of training the children to habits of reverence 
for elders, truthfulness with each other, and a majestic 
self-respect, that gave me a key to the characteristic 
Indian virtues, and enabled me to read "Hubbard's 
Indian Wars," with open eyes to see that the white 



27 



race wras more responsible than the Indians for the 
cruelties which transpired on both sides. Ever after 
I was an omnivorous reader of everything I could 
find about Indians, whether from ethnologists or 
travellers or residents, among them, — like Catlin, 
for instance : so that H. H.'s " Century of Dishonor " 
told me nothing that I did not know before. Besides 
this, I learned from William B. Ogclen 1 the history 
of the origin and action of the Indian Ring from 
its beginning with the fur-traders ; and studied the 
secret history of the Florida war, with officers of 
the army engaged in it, who revealed to me its 
persistence in the interests of the civil service under 
Governor Duval. All this, and acquaintance with the 
half-breed Chippewa missionary Tanner, who thirty 
years ago made in Boston precisely the same ex- 
planatory criticism on the vicious principle of all the 
missionary work for Indians that Sarah Winnemucca 
does, 2 prepared me to appreciate and understand the 

1 William B. Ogden — sometimes called " King of the West/' the 
founder of its capital, Chicago — was brought up near the Indians of 
Central New York, and did not abandon, until the last part of his life, 
a plan he formed early, to go into Congress and agitate to gather In- 
dians into States to be represented in Congress, to which he thought 
they would give a needed predominating moral element. This opinion 
was formed from long and intimate acquaintance with individual In- 
dians, East and West, and sympathized with by those who had it in 
their power to send him to Congress. He thought to give ten years to 
the agitation of the subject ; but the pecuniary responsibilities for 
others, whose property he bad advised them to invest in Chicago, and 
which was imperilled by the panics of 1837 and 1857, obliged him to 
put it off till death mocked his great purpose. A great purpose must 
be executed in the first fervor of its conception, or it never will be. 

2 This " vicious principle " is admirably set forth in Frederic 



28 



first lecture I heard from her, which she addressed 
" exclusively to women," in which she unfolded the 
domestic education given by the grandmothers of the 
Piute tribe to the youth of both sexes, with respect 
to their relations with each other both before and 
after marriage, — a lecture which never failed to ex- 
J cite the moral enthusiasm of every woman that heard 
it, and seal their confidence in her own purity of 
character and purpose. 

The faith that she then inspired in me has grown 
by everything else I have known her to say and do 
in a more than three years' intimacy in which my 
life has been bound up in hers : yet my faith and 
confidence in her do not rest exclusively on her own 
eloquent ipse dixit and practical consistency with it, 
far less on my own subjective impressions, which I 
am fully aware can be no evidence to other people, 
but on collateral evidence that has been continually 
pouring in upon me, that I am ready to give viva 
voce to other people, but much of which cannot, with 
propriety, be put into public print, as it involves a 
story of private trials of her own that are sacred to 
those who know them in all their particulars. This 
collateral evidence consisted, in addition to what 
is published in the Appendix to "Life among the 
Piutes " (see the " Letter of Roger Sherman Day. un- 
solicited"), of the testimony of persons unknown to 

Denison Maurice's " Religions of the World," and their relation to 
Christianity, which ought to be a manual for missionaries to the 
Indians especially, they are so apt to forget, with the exception per- 
haps of Quaker missionaries in the spirit of William Penn, that God 
reveals himself to every soul of man. 



29 



Sarah Winnemucca, who unexpectedly arose in her 
audiences to confirm what she said and declare it was 
not exaggerated, — such persons as the Rev. Edwin 
Brown of the First Church in Providence, Professor 
Brewer of New Haven, Father Hughes of St. Jerome 
Convent in New York, and a French priest for whom 
he spoke, and who he said was in Yakima when she 
was. all of whom gave personal indorsement to her 
statements ; also correspondents of mine in Nevada 
and California, one of whom furnished the following 
slips from the California newspapers of 1879, confirm- 
ing her statements about Rinehart and Scott. 

k< In addition to what Princess Sarah TTinnernucca said 
during her lecture the other evening about one Rinehart (the 
Indian agent at the Malheur Reservation), to the effect that 
not an Indian remains on the reservation at that place, ad- 
ditional statements come by way of Walla Walla. These 
reports say that there has not been a single Indian at that 
agency for over a year, and yet supplies are being constantly 
sent thither by the Government. The agent (Rinehart) 
himself has tried, and sent his emissaries all over the country, 
even unto Nevada, to bribe the Piutes to return. But in 
vain. Those poor Indians have had a taste of his brutality, 
and they want no more of it. So it seems that Sarah knew 
what she was talking about, and knew the facts. She said 
that this pet of the Indian Ring had promised pay to the 
Indians for working ; and when they applied for their wages, 
his course toward them was such that they declined further 
peonage of that kind. 

" Then he assumed the character of the bully, and with 
pistol in hand attempted to force them to work for him. 
Now, allowing the one concession that the Piutes are men, 



30 



it is perfectly natural that they should have left him and the 
reservation. Had he beeu a man of honesty and honor, he 
would have informed the Government of the exact condition 
of things, and thus have prevented the Government from 
still forwarding supplies for that agency. Not an Indian is 
within two hundred miles of the agency, and not one can be 
bribed to return. Yet the Government still sends the sup- 
plies. What becomes of them ? Perhaps Einebart could 
tell ; and perhaps Commissioner Hoyt could tell — if he 
would. Under such circumstances, no wonder the question 
is asked why Einehart is still kept in office under salary, for 
performing duties that do not exist. It is suggested that 
the reservation lands be sold for the benefit of the Indians. 
The question is asked, says the despatch, for what Indians ? 
There are none within two hundred miles." 

Here is another newspaper slip of this date, headed 
" A Model Representative of the Indian Bureau : " 

"Two or three weeks since, a fellow named J. W. Scott, 
who pretends to be acting for the Interior Department, ar- 
rived here from Oregon. His threats created considerable 
alarm among the Indians, who congregated here from all 
parts of the country to hear what he had to say. Xatches 
and Winnernucca say that at the time of the outbreak at the 
Malheur Eeservation, a year ago last summer, this man 
Scott, who they state had a beef contract at the reservation, 
had a talk with the Indians at Crowley's ranch. They told 
him that if he would state their grievances on paper and 
send the document to Washington, they would return to the 
reservation. The chiefs dictated and Xatches interpreted 
what he should write. When they finished, not having very 
much confidence in his integrity, they took the paper from 
him and gave it to G. B. Crowley to read. In this way they 



31 



ascertained that he had not written what they dictated, and 
instead of stating the fact that they were being starved at the 
reservation and were driven to desperation by the treatment 
they received, he painted the Indians as demons and the 
agent as an angel. This infuriated the savages, and Natches 
and Winnernucca could hardly restrain the reservation In- 
dians from scalping Scott right then and there. Knowing 
that he had played the Indians false at that time. batches 
and Winnernucca were afraid to trust him at the council held 
here upon his arrival from Malheur a short time ago, and 
they asked a few white men — among them the writer — to 
be present. What occurred at the council was truthfully 
reported in these columns at the time. Scott, it appears, 
does not like the truth ; so he reported to batches yesterday 
that the ' Silver State ' stated a few days ago that he 
(Natches) and Jerry Long, the interpreter, were the most 
notorious liars in the country. What object the fellow could 
have in telling such a lie to the Indians, the writer cannot 
surmise, unless it was for the purpose of making them dis- 
trustful of those who tell the truth about the Malheur 
Agency. An acquaintance of many years with many of the 
Piutes of Humboldt County warrants the writer in saying 
that so far as his experience extends, they are generally 
truthful and reliable ; while respectable white men who knew 
Scott in Plumas County, California, before he went to Mal- 
heur, say the records of the courts in that county will show 
that decent men testified that they would not believe him 
under oath. Surely the Interior Department ought to send 
a man with a better reputation as its representative to hold 
councils with the Indians, and keep Mr. Scott at Malheur to 
take the census of the Indians and make affidavit to the 
quantity of beef and blankets distributed at a reservation 
where there has not been an Indian since a year ago last 
June." 



32 



To these slips I might add most curious letters that 
I have received from both Democrats and Republicans 
of Virginia City arid Reno, who, supposing me to be 
sister of the millionnaire banker, wrote to induce me to 
serve their political interests with money and influ- 
ence, — some praising and some abusing Sarah, and 
both enlightening me. 

Hoping that I shall be pardoned for the inevitable 
egotism of making this special plea for my reliability 
as a witness in this case, I conclude to add to the 
report of the claims of her school what has trans- 
pired even since I began writing this Postscript. 

With her last letter acknowledging the last money 
subscribed for her boarding-school in August, came 
a notice that the literary exercises of the school were 
suspended for a month, on account of her need of 
rest, and in order that the children might assist in 
harvesting the splendid crop, some of which, as it 
had been agreed upon beforehand, was to pay the 
eleven men who had labored with Natches in the 
winter to buy water from the water company for 
the year's irrigation, and some was to pay the fifteen 
laborers, men and women, who were to help in the 
reaping, while the rest of the wheat, sold at the cur- 
rent market price of 630 per ton, would provide for 
the ensuing year's maintenance, besides affording food 
and seed corn for another year's planting. 

I must confess I was rather surprised at her letter's 
not containing a peean of joy on this impending happy 
consummation, but only a painfully earnest expression 
of anxiety that /should now rest from my labors for 



33 



her, and be content if she only went on in future 
with the day school. But I ascribed her subdued 
tone to the exhaustion produced by the long strain 
she had been under of body and mind. It was, how- 
ever, explained by her next letter, when she enclosed 
to me a letter she had received from a mistaken friend 
of mine telling her that Miss Peabody had sent her 
all the money that had been provided for her own 
old age, and had been working for her to get the 
§100 a month, harder than she (Sarah) had ever 
worked in her life. I need not say that this was 
accompanied with a passionate entreaty that I would 
never send her another cent, and suspend all further 
care for her work. Of course I replied, instanter, 
that this letter was false in every point ; that the pro- 
vision for my old age was untouched, and that the 
work I was doing for her was the greatest pleasure \ 
had ever enjoyed in my life. But before she could 
get my reply (for it takes six days for a letter to 
go from Boston to Lovelocks), another short missive 
came, saying that I must not write to her again till 
she should send word of her new whereabouts; for, 
" on account of our ill luck," Natches and herself 
were going away to earn some monej^, — she to get 
work in some kitchen tor at least her board. But 
not a word of explanation of the " ill luck," which I 
could not divine. 

I have therefore kept back this paper from the 
press till I should hear again. And another letter 
has at last come, after a fortnight of dreadful silence, 
acknowledging my letters that she had just found, on 



34 



her return to Lovelocks after a fortnight's service in 
the kitchen of a Mrs. Mary Wash, of Rye Beach, 
where she had earned her board, and had less than a 
dollar in money ; and in this letter she explains the 
" ill luck." Some of her inimical white neighbors had 
told her people, who had agreed to take pay for their 
work from the wheat, that Miss Peabody was sending 
her out 8100 a month for them, and thus put them 
up to demanding their pay in monej" at once! "If 
we could have borrowed $200 for two months," she 
says, " w r e could have paid them in money, and then 
sold the rest of the crop for $30 a ton. But it was 
the game to force us to sell the crop to the store- 
keepers for $17 a ton, which (thanks to the Spirit 
Father for so much) paid all our debts, but left noth- 
ing over ; and I could not feed on love, so could not 
renew the school; and I was perfectly discouraged 
and worn out." Add to this, her dear niece Delia 
had just died, who had been in a consumption ever 
since the death of the elder son of Natches, which took 
place when they were all so sick of pneumonia at 
Winnemucca just before Mr. Stanford gave them the 
ranch. She rejoices that " she is safe in heaven ; " 
she hopes the " Spirit Father may soon let me die." 
When she has fixed up her winter clothes she says 
she shall go and seek more work for her board ; and 
acids in closing, " So, darling, do not talk any more 
on my behalf, but let my name die out and be forgot- 
ten ; only, don't you forget me, but write to me some- 
times, and I will write to you while I live." Of 
course I have replied to this wail, that while I do not 



35 



wonder at her despair for the moment, I by no means 
accept it as the finale of our great endeavor, — that it 
is a natural but temporary reaction of her nerves, and 
I see that she is still her whole noble self in this ener- 
getic action for personal independence, which I shall 
make known at once to all her friends, sure that it 
will challenge them to help her through another year 
until another harvest. Meantime I believe-that the 
entire change of work will prove a recreative rest, and 
her people will plainly see by it that it is not true that 
she had been living irrespective of them on the $100 
a month, and that her enthusiastic scholars will not 
fail to bring their parents back to their confidence 
and gratitude to her. 1 I tell her that I have found 

1 It may seem strange that her own people could be so influenced 
by the settlers even for a time. It shows their demoralization. 
It was one of Sarah's acutest trials to find, when she went out to 
Nevada, in August, 1884, how the last seven years of homelessness 
depriving her people of all opportunity for family councils and the 
hereditary domestic discipline, had told on their morals. She found 
them divided into small squads scratching for mere bread under cap- 
tains elected for their smartness in getting along, instead of their good- 
ness, as when the fatherly chief appointed them ; and that they had 
partially lost their old confidence in her as their faithful " Mother," 
though she could not blame them for it, as she said she had been made 
the mouthpiece of so many lying promises. The same want of confi- 
dence had transpired temporarily in 1880, when the Indian Office 
failed to send the canvas for the hundred tents to Lovelocks that it 
spontaneously promised her father when they were in Washington in 
1879 ; and the Secretary of the Interior also failed to follow up the 
written order he gave her to show her people and Agent Wilbur of 
Yakima. But that had proved a transient spasm of doubt, and she 
had come East on her mission in 1883, at their entreaty. She had 
begun to feel, however, since commencing her school, that it would 
prove a rallying-point of union, and with the exception of the inter- 



36 

at the bookbinder's two hundred copies of her book, 
which I shall at once begin to sell for her again, offer- 
ing to send one, postpaid, to whoever sends me $ 1.00, 
and thus make the nest egg of a new fund to enable' 
her to renew her grand enterprise of making a Normal 
School (for that is what she was doing) of Indian 
teachers of English, for all the tribes whose languages 
she knows, and who will, in their turn, give their 
scholars, together with the civilizing English lan- 
guage, the industrial education that they have at the 
same time received, while helping in the housekeep- 
ing and on the ranch. 

And with this implied appeal to the multitudes of 
individuals in the United States who, I am certain, 
are earnestly desirous to do something for our Indian 
brothers, but do not know exactly what to do, I 
send forth this pamphlet in the faith that has brought 
millions of dollars, unsolicited except in prayer, to 
George Mailer's Orphanage in Bristol, old England, 
and created the Consumptives' Home and the asylum 
for incurable cancer patients in New England. 

ELIZABETH P. PEABODY. 

Jamaica Plain, Mass. 

preter and the other virtual slaves of the agent on the Reservation 
that they would be brought into unity with her, notwithstanding the' 
unceasing intrigues of Gibson against her, and which were undoubt- 
edly excited by the fact that her school was attracting even the Piutes 
on the Reservation, who wanted to send to her their children. 



H92 7k 538 



